# With Imani Perry @ The Nantucket Book Festival

Imani Perry is one of the most captivating speakers I’ve ever heard.

I discovered that when I asked her a question, posed in 1951, by Langston Hughes, in his poem *Harlem*:

 What happens to a dream deferred?

 Does it dry up
 like a raisin in the sun?
 Or fester like a sore—
 And then run?
 Does it stink like rotten meat?
 Or crust and sugar over—
 like a syrupy sweet?

 Maybe it just sags
 like a heavy load.

 Or does it explode?

Her eye-opening answer comes early in our conversation.

We also discuss:

What Perry discovered about Lorraine Hansberry, the first black playwright to have a work appear on Broadway; Perry’s book “[Breathe: A Letter to My Sons](https://www.amazon.com/Breathe-Letter-Sons-Imani-Perry/dp/0807076554)” – in which she balances “the talk” with instilling the desire to fly; the influence of her grandmother, Nita Garner Perry, who worked as a domestic and sent all twelve of her children to college; the powerful educational legacy of Pearl High in Nashville; what her adoptive Jewish father taught her about Black history and culture; nd her “dangerously high threshold for pain,” which she has discovered living with a “collection” of sometimes debilitating autoimmune diseases.

Perry is a Professor of African American Studies at Harvard, where she received her law degree and a Ph.D. in American Studies, and the author of [eight books](https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001KI5ZIS/allbooks), including the winner of a National Book Award.

Our conversation took place at the Nantucket Book Festival in June of 2023.